Fledgling
by Remember
Summary: [ONE-SHOT] What does it mean to be hollow? To feel no love, nor fear, nor joy, nor sorrow? When Count Dracula faces the philosophical inquiries of a newborn vampire, how does he answer? Does he speak the truth? Is it possible to truly feel nothing? - Proper explanation within. Help feed my ravenous muse and R&R.


**[NOTE: cover image is a cropped and slightly edited version of a photograph by one Marta Syrko. Link to original in my profile. FAIR USE NOTICE: NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO ORIGINAL ARTIST.]**

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 **The following is the result of not enough sleep and way too much philosophical pondering.**

 **The initial conception of this one-shot was inspired by a series of lines in Lyn Harkeran's current WIP _Dancing into the Night_** (which is amazing) **and the dark sense of tragedy in RegencyPoet's one-shot _Lamentations for a Wildflower_** (which is also amazing) **.**

 **Now, anyone familiar with my work** (past and present) **knows that one of my favorite Dracula scenes in the film _Van Helsing_ is the Count's "I am hollow" speech. For years, I have translated that monologue as Dracula being one of those souls who - because he has lived so long - would prefer to suppress and feel nothing rather than feeling _everything_ , as it is easier to avoid the inevitability of being disappointed when one does not indulge in happiness and love. I still maintain that this is the case **(because it logically just makes more sense to me) **but there were a handful of lines in the 7th chapter of Lyn Harkenan's story that left me pondering what hollowness wouldn't just look like, but what it would feel like. How does it work? Is there such a thing?**

 **Then came the image of the Count trying to explain this phenomenon to a newborn vampire and thus this one-shot was born.**

 **It takes place post-film, under the assumption that Dracula has been resurrected for some unknown reason and he's looking for a new bride with whom he can rebuild his lost empire.**

 **I feel I should warn you, this is a one-shot, so it has not been edited by a beta or anything like that. This was me binge-writing for two and a half hours and then doing a quick edit myself right after, so if I overlooked any mistakes, please forgive me. Sadly, I am fallible.**

 **Would love to hear your thoughts on this after you read, so please feel free to leave me a review! Otherwise - enjoy!**

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 _ **Fledgling**_

It had been something like a dream – a wistful existence between reality and the fantastical. Up until three days ago, Jane's life had been without any real purpose, a quick succession of busy nothings. With the passing of her father to illness at the close of last winter, she had inherited his bookshop and what little else he possessed, leaving her otherwise alone in the world. She had borne his loss with equanimity, but underneath that ever-composed and kind exterior lay an ocean of vast feeling and hidden depths. With this death and the arrival of her twenty-eighth birthday, Jane had resigned herself to her fate – she would live out her days in this bookshop, alone and an old-maid, and though it was a destiny not of her choosing, she was determined to be content with it.

Until he crossed the threshold of her humble store.

He was like a tall, dark drink of something rich and decadent, his person gliding between the shelves, the footfall of his hessian-clad feet virtually silent. Not even the worn floorboards creaked in protest under his weight. She had read enough novels to tell that the man was a foreigner to her native country, his hair unusually long and pulled back into a ponytail, ears adorned with gold hoops that glinted whenever they caught the light of a neighboring gas-lamp. But it was his eyes that ensnared her – pools of liquid fire, as blue as a summer sky that concurrently warmed her down to her toes, only to leave her shivering shortly thereafter as if from the cold.

He had introduced himself as Vlad and nothing more, and though normally Jane was more attentive to the subtleties of human expression, the man possessed an almost ethereal beauty that distracted her otherwise well-guarded mind. His first visit to her humble establishment had been a brief one, but then he had visited the following day and did not leave her side even after the sun had set.

She had never believed any man – nobility or otherwise – to be more well-read than her dearly departed father, but this stranger seemed to possess the width and breadth of the whole of human history in his mind, which made him an exceptional conversationalist. Though he spoke very little about his personal life, she could tell just by the depth in his eyes that he had seen and experienced much, and Jane felt herself inexplicably drawn to this dark angel.

He had come to her the following night, just as she was closing up shop, the Victorian London streets having grown quiet as most had returned to their homes for the evening. She never heard him enter her humble business, but the instant she had locked the door and drawn the curtain over the window, she had felt his presence behind her – a thickening in the air.

In this moment now, she could not recall the words he had spoken – only the brilliant glowing of his eyes, the hunger in his countenance, and the nagging sense of lingering danger on the fringes of her conscious mind when he closed the distance between them. He had taken her into his arms, his person flush against her own. She recalled the headiness, the weightless sensation when his head dipped low, lips brushing against hers in a tender kiss that tasted of carefully bridled passion.

Although Jane had quickly grown warm from the intimacy of the action, nothing could have prepared her for the consuming lust that coiled around her heart like a thorny vine, only to mercilessly squeeze when her body was suddenly pinned between him and the obliging door to the back room. All thought and reason seemed banished from her usually sharp and rational mind, her guard rapidly discarded and forgotten on the floor along with several articles of clothing.

And then she was bearing all of her secrets to this dark and perilously handsome man, the two strewn about on a nearby divan in a dark corner of the small chamber, his well-experienced person simultaneously awakening and satiating a primal ache within her that she had never been aware of before tonight.

Jane had been swimming in a sea of silk and liquid fire, on the very cusp of being lost to the stars when suddenly there had been an excruciating pain in her neck and she was no longer swimming, but drowning, suffocating, being drained to the point of existing only in a blackening oblivion that appeared on her horizon and threatened to swallow her whole into nothingness. She had opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came out, and then she had slipped into unconsciousness.

She could not tell how much time had passed between that feral nightmare and the present. All she knew was that she was starving and her entire body ached with a stiffness she had never before experienced.

Jane opened her eyes slowly, licking her lips to find that her mouth possessed a strange metallic taste. Raising her impossibly heavy hand to her face proved a struggle as she went to wipe away the drool from the corner of her mouth, but when she pulled back her hand, she was soon to discover that it was not saliva on her tongue, but blood. She waited for her chest to tighten in fear, for her heart to race, but her body was strangely silent.

This only seemed to intensify her concern as she managed to lift herself somewhat on the divan so her upper half was at least partially elevated, groaning quietly in response to the stiffness of her limbs and the dull ache on the side of her neck.

"Don't get up too quickly," she heard a familiar voice warn from somewhere in the shadows. "Your body is still working its way through the transition. You need to rest. If you overexert yourself, the pain will be most unforgiving."

Jane's eyes immediately fixed on the source of the voice, a dark personage seated in a lone chair between her and the door, the only source of the light in the room being that of a full moon outside in the night sky, its soft, incandescent glow glinting off the glass of the window before spreading out over the floor like a muted heavenly pillar of pale fire. Its very existence seemed to deter her, as though it were too bright for her suddenly sensitive and prickling eyes.

However, it was not her newfound sense of abhorrence for the light which concerned her, but the fact that the man seated across from her was none other than Vlad, the handsome stranger who had inspired and nurtured such fervent passion in her not moments ago. And yet, this was not the same man. The Vlad of her recent memory was full of depth and warmth and feeling and mystery. The man seated before her felt broken somehow, and on a level she could not yet understand.

He seemed… hollow.

"Who are you?" Jane said at long last, the query far more even than she had anticipated it being.

"You know who I am, child."

"I know that your name may be Vlad, but that does not tell me who truly are."

"My name is Count Vladislaus Dracula," he answered with unnerving steadiness.

"And what have you done to me, Count?" Jane asked, reaching up to touch her neck where she found two small puncture wounds, partially healed, yet still sticky with what was left of her lifeblood.

"I have been all that is left of my kind for the last two months," he explained calmly. "Since my return, I have had difficulty not killing those that I feed from. You are the first to have survived my… _dark kiss_ ," and though he said the words with a degree of mirth, his eyes still felt dead to her.

"But what did you do?" she repeated, the growing terror in her now trembling voice intensifying as she discovered more blood around her mouth.

"I took my fill of you in order to sustain myself and then I fed you my blood so that you may become what I am, should you choose to do so."

"I don't understand."

"With my bite comes a venom of sorts that is presently working its way through your body, healing whatever may ail you while preserving you as you are in your present state. The consumption of my blood not only binds you to me as your master and teacher, but it prolongs your existence until the transformation is completed, and then you must feed. If you do not, you will cease to be."

"Feed?"

With a subtle motion of his hand, he directed her attention to a small heap of something on the floor at his side, resting in his shadow – the barmaid from the tavern just down the street. She appeared to be unconscious, though the steady rise and fall of her breast told Jane that the woman was still alive. For now, anyway.

"You mean I must drink her blood?"

He nodded and though the idea should have repulsed Jane, the mere thought of biting into the slumbering woman's neck and feasting on that warm crimson made her salivate. But her conscience still lingered and she shook her head as if to dispel the awakening hunger inside of her.

"But she is an innocent! I cannot kill in cold blood!"

"Then you will die."

"But I don't want to die."

"Then it would appear you have a choice to make, little one. Death, or life eternal?"

Jane's brow furrowed as she looked between the unnervingly motionless man and the unsuspecting barmaid on the floor at his feet.

"What are you?"

"You have read many books, my dear. What does your soul tell you?"

"You are one of the undying ones," she answered after some deliberation. "Nosferatu. A vampire."

"Correct."

"But how is it possible to be living, and yet not? You seem so different to me now than what you were before. Your eyes are so… so empty."

"You are seeing me without my mask, little one. A rare gift indeed."

"I still don't understand."

"You will see for yourself, should you choose to accept what I have offered you. But in the meantime, would you like me to explain it?"

She nodded once, still leaning over the high arm-rest of the divan, too weary to move just yet.

"With immortality comes a cost. To be one of the undying implies that both the body and the spirit must perish in order to ensure balance, as immortality defies the natural order. Because of this state, we become hollow, shells of what we were in mortality with only the recollection of emotion, an echo of once was."

"But that isn't possible," Jane insisted. "To feel nothing? There is no such thing. To suppress or ignore the emotions of one's heart is certainly possible, but those feelings still exist."

"I have no heart. I feel no love, nor fear, nor joy, nor sorrow. I am hollow, and I will live forever."

"You must still at least be able to feel anger or even apathy."

"But I cannot," he explained. "Only ever remnants of what was, never in its truest or most raw form. The only thing I can feel, little one, is what you are experiencing right at this moment. I can see your eyes diverting back and forth between my gaze and this damsel at my feet. It's an unceasing hunger, a hunger that drives everything else – every action you will make and every façade you will wear."

"You mean… when you kissed me, when you…" she paused, unable to describe the things he had done to her body without wishing to hide her face in maiden embarrassment, "…you mean all of that was a lie?"

"The hunger is the only thing that exists within me, child – no love, no desire. What you thought you saw in my eyes were projections, a mirror of what you had wanted. It is what allows my kind to mingle in the society of the living while remaining undetected, for a truly hollow creature without a mask can be spotted with the greatest of ease. It's all in the eyes, little one."

For the first time since their conversation had begun, he finally moved in his seat, leaning his body forward somewhat so the moonlight would wash across his face, illuminating the pallid flesh of his cheeks and brow, reflecting off of his frosty irises.

"Look into my eyes and see for yourself," he whispered.

And look she did.

Beyond the swirling hue of his glowing irises was an emptiness she had never noticed before, a pitless black, a deadness that seemed to deepen and expand and the mere sight of it sent a chill through Jane's entire being. She shuddered violently when at last she was able to look away, her own eyes prickling with tears as an overwhelming sense of pity and fear gripped her silent heart.

 _What a frightful thing to be hollow_ , she thought to herself. _What a sad and terrible fate._

"The time is drawing nigh, little one," he said, interrupting her reverie. "Your transition is nearly complete. A few minutes more and you will need to make your choice."

"I'm not sure I can," she replied, her voice barely a whisper. "A life without feeling is no life at all. My hopes, my dreams, my aspirations and ambitions are what has driven my very existence since I was a child. What will I be without them?"

"The hunger will motivate your existence."

"That is a terrible fate – for any creature," she said with a forlorned sigh. "How can you endure so many lifetimes bound to such an awful chain?"

"It is not as awful as you may think," was his dispassionate reply.

"But how could it be anything but?" Jane insisted "How could any being wish to live such a long and empty life?"

"Because it is a small price to pay to never taste of true death."

His answer sparked her curiosity as she studied him a little closer. Though genuinely more fatigued now than she had been when she had first awoken, strangely enough she also felt more discerning, as if she could suddenly see and pick up on the subtle nuances in his words, the slight inflections in his tone, and the barely perceptible alterations in his expression.

This creature before her may have claimed to be hollow, but that was not entirely the case. She could sense something buried deep within him underneath the layers of centuries, and it made her wonder.

"Why the aversion to death?" she asked.

"Because I know what comes after it."

"And you fear it?"

She could sense a faint amusement in him when he replied, "You are so eager to paint me in a better light, aren't you, little one?" and she watched as he finally leaned back in his chair, face shadowed in the darkness once more.

"My eagerness amuses you. Is amusement not an emotion?"

She watched as a single one of his dark brows arched in reply.

"I suppose to a degree, yes; if thinking so gives you comfort."

"Did you ever consider, Count, that perhaps it is more than this hunger that drives you? Maybe it is this hollowness of which you speak. Maybe the hunger is you trying to fill your emptiness, the lonely, aching hole in your chest. Is that sensation not evidence enough that you can feel after all? What if the hunger is just the more prominent of your emotions? What if your kind can feel – but those feelings are just muted?"

"I confess myself intrigued by your theory, little one, and though I would certainly like to indulge your philosophical queries for a while longer, I fear the time is drawing near. I can sense your hunger, child, and no amount of intellectualization or distraction will make it go away."

He was right, of course. She had noticed a hunger of her own growing steadily inside of her, spreading from deep within her gut to the point where she could feel something inside of her pounding… or perhaps that rhythmic beating was the sound of the unconscious barmaid's heart?

"It is time to choose, my dear. Death or life?"

Jane felt the tears burning in her eyes again as her gaze, which she had been fighting to keep on the man before her, was now resting on the unsuspecting mortal on the floor. She had always admired the tavern's barmaid. She was a beautiful creature with a halo of golden hair and skin like polished ivory. She looked like a fallen angel in a heap on the floor, blissfully unaware that she was resting in the shadow of the devil.

Jane knew what she needed to do, and though her body had already made up her mind for her, still her humanity clung to the fringes of her conscious mind, struggling to be heard amidst the adamant, rampaging hunger within.

"I too do not wish to die," she cried softly, a single tear tumbling down her fair cheek. "But I do not wish to live without feeling either, and do not want to take the life of an innocent."

"No creature on this earth, save perhaps a suckling child, is truly innocent, little one," he explained. "Do not view it as the taking away of a life, but rather the releasing of a tormented soul. If she is truly innocent, will she not return to your God?"

She considered his offered rationalization carefully, her understanding and accepting of his words easing the ache in her joints as her body felt less weighed down with fatigue and she sat up more fully on the divan, her eyes still fixed to the barmaid on the floor.

"And perhaps your theory holds some validity to it," he continued. "But the only way to find out for yourself is to become what I am and know through experience. Maybe," and he extended his hand to her, beckoning, "that is the reason why I sought you out, why I have continued to dwell in your presence. I have no wish to exist as a solitary creature of the night, my dearest one. I long for the companionship of another and have grown weary of being so alone in a world that does not know who I am or what I am. You are the first to have lingered in my presence without my mask and you have yet to shrink away in fear. Is that not something?"

Jane smiled sadly, though with some difficulty as the hunger had only grown worse in the last passing moments to the point of causing her physical pain, but she suppressed her discomfort and replied,

"Even though you insist that what we shared earlier this evening was just the echoes of emotions that once were, the mirroring of what I may have desired, for myself it was real." She watched him closely, searching for his reaction, and though he gave her no discernable expression, she could sense a change in him at her confession. "Despite what my rational mind may be telling me, I find that a part of me cares for you on a level I don't yet understand, and I do not wish for you to carry on alone in shadows."

"You would sacrifice yourself for my comfort?" he inquired.

Jane could sense what she assumed was carefully concealed, yet genuine surprise, and she nodded bravely, a couple more tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Why would you do such a thing for me, little one? I, who have so cruelly taken all from you?" he asked.

"No creature of such sorrow should be forced to walk this earth alone," she said.

For the first time since the start of that frightful evening, Jane could have sworn she saw something genuine pass through his eyes, the hollowness replaced just briefly with a flash of life before it vanished once again, and it gave her hope.

"I will feed."

She did not wish to die, and for reasons she could not understand or articulate, she did not want to leave this lost soul in his solitude – not when there was a chance for redemption.

Maybe it was a grand rationalization of the hunger that was now painfully forcing her canines to lengthen in her mouth. She could not be certain, but a part of her didn't care as she slipped off the divan to fall to her knees on the floor before crawling over to the human at the Count's feet.

Dracula watched in absolute silence as Jane carefully rolled the barmaid over so the human was lying on her back, her head turned to the side so her throat was exposed, resting in the light of the moon. Before the young fledgling could lose her nerve, she descended just as the barmaid began to rouse from her slumber, and then she bit down on the unsuspecting mortal's neck.

The sharp incisors sinking into the sensitive flesh of her neck caused the barmaid to cry out for just an instant until her brief moment of pain passed as Jane held her in her arms, feeding feverishly.

For the first few seconds, the taste of the blood sickened Jane. Her stomach turned as the warm crimson touched her tongue and then slinked down her throat in one unrelenting gulp. But the more she drank, the less poignant her nausea became and soon her revulsion transformed into a mindless frenzy, an unquenchable thirst.

The more she tried to sate her need, the more she became aware of something dying within her, some kind of light she had not noticed before fading away, washing out and draining, leaving her dry and empty – only inspiring her to drink more feverishly, as if doing so would replenish what she was losing. But the more Jane fed, the more empty she felt and when the barmaid was long dead and depleted of all blood, Jane felt Dracula's hand resting on her shoulder as if he were urging her to cease.

She obeyed without question, releasing the corpse in her arms and watching with unnerving disinterest as it hit the floor, the lifeless limbs flopping somewhat – and then all was still.

The silence was deafening and it reigned for several long minutes until she became aware of the Count rising from his chair so he was standing before her, his person shielding her from the light of the moon and bathing her in his endless shadow.

"What do you feel now, my little one?" he asked her.

Jane rose her head so her gaze could meet his eyes. Her expression was utterly blank.

"Nothing," she said. "I feel absolutely nothing."


End file.
